Red Flag warning issued for East Bay hills area
A red flag warning for the East Bay hills and parts of the North Bay was scheduled to remain in effect through this afternoon, amid concerns the conditions that are already ripe for wild fires will become only more dangerous, weather and fire officialssaid.
The warning was issued because winds are expected to reach 30-40 mph and maybe 50 mph, according to the National Weather Service. The warning was scheduled to go into effect late Tuesday night and run until today at 3 p.m.
The peak winds will hit this morning, according to weather service forecasters.
“The low-pressure system is trending north,” NWS meteorologist Brooke Bingaman said. “The southern side of that trough if going to be moving along Northern California, and the air is going counter-clockwise. When it gets more east, we’ll be on the back side of the trough, and we’ll get those northerly winds. The red flag warning will be for that time when the back side of the trough is moving through.”
Firefighters in the northern part of the state already were getting a bit of a preview,asgustywindsinthat area caused the Dixie fire’s spread to speed up. Officials from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the Lassen County Sheriff’s Office announced new mandatory evacuations in the areas south of Highway 36 and west of Highway 395 and said the fire grew to 604,511 acres overnight. It is 31% contained.
The Caldor Fire also was growing in El Dorado County. It exploded overnight Monday into Tuesday and had burned 65,000 acres overall in El Dorado County. Fire crews have zero containment on that fire.
Before the red flag warning, PG&E issued a notice that it likely will enact a public safety power shutdown on Tuesday.
Slightly less hazy skies were expected to hover above the Bay Area again, according to the weather service, and the air quality readings were expected to alternate between healthy and moderately healthy figures. Any measurement that shows the fine particulate matter to be below 50 is considered healthy air and anything between 51-100 is considered moderately healthy.
The low pressure creating the winds also will send the thermometer down a few degrees, Bingaman said. Temperatures on Monday reached triple digits in some far inland places — Pittsburg and Antioch reached 103 degrees, Concord was 99 and Livermore 95 in the Bay Area’s hottest spots Monday. Temperatures cooled Tuesday, and the weather service said it expects that pattern to stay in place throughout the week.
“Once we get past this fire-weather concern, the weather pattern will stay cooler,” Bingaman said. “The trough will stay to our east, but it will push a little further, so we won’t have the winds.”